Acoustic Features at Intonational Phrase Boundaries: Comparative Study of Native Speakers and L2 Learners of Chinese Mandarin

Acoustic features of Mandarin prosodic boundaries offer insights into addressing pronunciation challenges for second language learners and enhancing Computer-Assisted Pronunciation Training (CAPT). In this paper, based on the large-scale Non-native Chinese Speech Corpus (BLCU-SAIT Speech Corpus), we systematically investigate the acoustic features of intonational phrase boundaries in Mandarin for both native speakers and L2 learners. The specific research areas encompass boundary duration-related features and pitch reset. Our findings suggest that as the Chinese Proficiency (HSK) of L2 learners increases, the prosodic features at intonational phrase boundaries become closer to those of native speakers, maintaining an approximate linear relationship between them. Specifically, HSK is negatively correlated with major duration-related features and positively correlated with pitch reset. Moreover, there is a trade-off between syllable shortening before boundaries and increased pause duration following boundaries.